BrentA: Good Parents Stabilize Kids' Lives

Son is home from first year at college, and my parenting is still hands-on. Come to think of it, parenting is still hands on for my own dad, who is both my boss and my mentor and a sounding board for ideas, while at the same time he makes a great pulled pork sandwich with cookies and chips. Mom send us her Social Security check for years when I worked on the newspaper business - sent it every month, as sort of a benefactor of the arts. I'll never have to "make my own way" because that would indicate I was starting from scratch, which a man never has to do if he has good parents. They built the foundation and they walled themselves inside it on purpose, the better to stabilize it. But my mom's parents did the same before her. My dad's parents were hands-off, abandoning him as a babe. He chose a different route. So do I/Brent Andrews.

Posted May 3, 2008, 12:43 a.m.

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